The French Zenly, collateral victim of the difficulties of Snap
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The American group has announced its intention to close the Parisian company, at the head of a social network of 35 million users. 70 employees are concerned.
Zenly employees did not expect it. On Wednesday, in an email sent by its CEO Evan Spiegel, the American group Snap announced its desire to close the French company which it had acquired in 2017 for 213 million dollars. This cessation of activity comes within the framework of a global savings plan: Snap, shaken by the jolts of digital advertising, dismisses a total of 1,200 employees and stop or reduce the size of several services. Zenly and its 70 employees are part of this clean cut. The social network it publishes will soon close its doors and all the staff will be laid off.
Read alsoIn crisis, Snapchat cuts 20% of its workforce
The day after this announcement, misunderstanding reigns among Zenly employees. The latter had received Snap shares in July and had been congratulated for their work by the boss of the group. Since their acquisition in 2017, the social network Zenly has grown from 120,000 to 35 million active users worldwide, and the growth continued. An ambitious overhaul of the service was put online last May. The lights therefore seemed to be green for Parisian society. The only downside is the departure in April 2022 of CEO and founder Antoine Martin.
“We have invested a lot in Zenly“says a spokesperson for Snap. But the group believes that it can no longer continue to support the French company, which is little monetized, while the parent company is refocusing on the growth of its own application. “We will in the future concentrate our efforts on our Snap Map service», a Snapchat feature similar to Zenly.
The resale scenario ruled out
Launched in 2016 by Antoine Martin and Alexis Bonillo, Zenly is a social mapping service. Concretely, users can geolocate themselves, find out where their friends are and chat with each other. After raising funds from Kima Ventures (Xavier Niel), IDInvest and then the American Benchmark Capital, Zenly caught the eye of Evan Spiegel and was acquired by Snap in June 2017. The French company has suite kept a certain autonomy and developed in parallel with Snapchat. The technologies behind Zenly and Snap Map are therefore not the same.
Although it is little used in the United States and Europe, the preserve of Snapchat, Zenly is today in the top 10 of the most downloaded social networks in Asia and in particular in Japan, a market that is nevertheless known to be difficult for Western applications. . The application has also made a name for itself in Central Europe.
“How is it possible that an American actor could kill such a French company? Snap could have sold Zenly to another group, or even to its founders. There would have been takers. Especially since Zenly was not a direct threat to Snapchat“says a good connoisseur of Parisian society. According to our information, Snap would have explained to Zenly employees that they had ruled out the resale scenario so as not to see a potential rival arise.
Staff are now awaiting details of the process of closing their business, which is expected to take several months. The Snap group affirms that the employees will be accompanied by a redeployment cell. But it is not planned to date that some join the American parent company, which has partly frozen its hiring.
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